The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, everyone 🤦

The most oppressed people on Earth: motorists 😂
- I read that in Jeremy Clarkson's voice lol
  
  It's like they just let Jeremy Clarkson write this pamphlet.
- Truly more oppressed than g*mers 😔
- Same goes for carnists lol
  
  What’s a carnist?

Next step: “we are a nation of smokers and millions of us smoke daily. We are making the life of these people easier. Stop to the No Smoking areas. If a pregnant woman is present she can go eff herself. Stop to taxes on tobacco.
- “We are a civilization of fossil fuel users, billions of us use electricity generated from fossil energy sources daily. We are…”
  
  Unfortunately, this isn't far from the actual rhetoric they use.

Luckily, these are just the last desperate acts of an unelected Prime Minister, who only got the job because the last one crashed the economy inside a month (who only got the job because the last one was Boris Johnson). He knows that the party will be condemned to irrelevance next year and is anxious to find anything that could possibly resonate with enough voters
Ironically Rishi Sunak famously doesn't really drive, and once had to borrow someone else's car for a publicity stunt where he inadvertently demonstrated that he doesn't even know how to fill one up with petrol. Sadly he doesn't drive because hes a gazillionaire, not because he uses public transport
- That is wishful thinking in the extreme
  
  Have you seen the polls in the last two years? Or the that a majority of prominent Conservative MPs for the last ten years have already announced they won't run next year to avoid their own little portillo moments?
  They know they're done and are holding on for either a miracle or something like this policy change to stick. Which isn't impossible, but that there's a good chance of him winning an election is what is wishful thinking. They're done.

I'm just taking a moment to remember the massive smear campaign against Corbyn, including the centrists in Labour working to undermine him during their election, and how ultimately it led to this dumbass taking the reins instead.
- well this guy is the tory leader
  but it's mad that corbyn was ousted for antisemitism he didn't do and now the SS are fine again
- Now I'm just waiting 'til starmer does some blairite lowest common denominator research, by reading some red-tops and decides to support this.
  It'll be like Tony Blair's housing policies.

New national parking platform
...if that means what I think it means, it's probably the worst of the lot.
Take it from an American: mandatory minimum parking will absolutely ruin your towns and cities.
- More and more American cities are removing them too!
  
  And thank goodness for that! I hope the trend continues until we have actual, livable places.
- Sorry for downvote, it's not that at all.
  At the moment each carpark on the UK can use any app it likes on mobile to pay, so you end up with every place having its own. Dozens of apps on phones to pay for parking, having to remember which one is right for the one you're in today.
  The proposal is to have a single app and have different car parks sign up to it so it's easier for people to pay.
  I say proposal. It's not a plan is it. Idea? Dream? Fantasy? I dunno how much they can do before they are forced to call an election and get kicked out.
- Just put one big parking lot for every car at the center of the country and then everyone can walk to their destinations! parking solved!

Letting people travel "how they want" he says while cancelling new train lines for those who wants to use that. The blokes a disengenuious wanker who we can't be rid of quick enough.
- It's straight out of the American conservative talking points book. Somehow, driving has been equated with freedom and not fully embracing driving over all other firms of transportation taking away individual freedom.
  How is it freedom to be forced to own a car, pay for gas and maintenance, and waste your life in car traffic every single day?
  It's the dumbest talking point.
- That's why railways should be privatised.
  
  Typical conservative strategy:
  Public thing exists
  Become a lead weight in government so public thing gets underfunded and cannot adapt to market changes.
  Public thing no longer meets expectations.
  "See? It should be privatized and you won't have this issue"
  Privatize thing. A few people make a crap load of money in the transition. Thing starts out acceptable for the first few years.
  "Oh no, capitalism uses an infinite growth ponzi model. How do we increase shareholder value this year?"
  Private thing gets underfunded and consumers get manipulated and abused.
  Are we winning yet?
  
  Absolutely fucking not. Privatisation is literally the worst thing you could do. Do we really want some random assholes to own something we rely on and try to squeeze it for as much profit as possible? I don't, fuck capitalism
  
  Privatized public transportation rarely works. At most you'll find some success stories of companies that partnered with a government to jointly service a transportation line.
  
  Didn't England already go through that, and wasn't it a complete failure ? someone knowledgeable quick please
  
  I disagree. Aside from privately owned Brightline who already owns the land around their stations, owns their tracks, and has a lot of incentive to expand their coverage, I have not heard of a single other piece of privatized infrastructure that actually benefits the users or actively engages in expansion

@mondoman712
Best driving experience in the world? The Netherlands, because when you shift a significant number of people off the roads into alternative transport the remaining drivers have less traffic and higher average speeds than an over-reliance on cars.
Risak is just committing the same mistake Robert Moses made 80 - 50 years ago, building more roads to "solve" traffic but it just induced more car traffic - - and then repeat again and again.
- Just one more lane
- Do you have a good source? Not denying, just on the lockout for stuff to shove in diehard motorists' faces that they will struggle to deny with anything coming anywhere close to resembling facts
  
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox
  Adding extra capacity to a network when the moving entities selfishly choose their route can in some cases reduce overall performance. That is because the Nash equilibrium of such a system is not necessarily optimal. The network change induces a new game structure which leads to a (multiplayer) prisoner's dilemma. In a Nash equilibrium, drivers have no incentive to change their routes. While the system is not in a Nash equilibrium, individual drivers are able to improve their respective travel times by changing the routes they take. In the case of Braess's paradox, drivers will continue to switch until they reach Nash equilibrium despite the reduction in overall performance.
  
  I think Not Just Bikes made a video on this
  
  also CityNerd on youtube
- TIL where the name of the Unsleeping City character came from...

Freedom to travel except if you're taking the train, then you can get fucked with delays, overcrowded trains and expensive fairs. Glad to be living on this hell rock
- Forcing everyone to own a car due to lack of public transport/safe cycling infrastructure fucks over motorists as well. Imagine the traffic in London if suddenly everyone that commutes by train was forced to drive in.
  
  people wouldn't even be able to leave their driveways
  
  Just look at strikes. From 12 minutes to reach the motorway to 40 minutes or more, and even that has issues near junctions

What a fucking idiot. Has he been living under a rock? He's going out of his way to remake all of America's mistakes. Absolute buffoon.
- What mistakes? The ultra rich have a great life in the US. He's just serving his own interests. But remember you're poor because of immigrants! /s
- That's what brexit means - fuck 99% of the population so the 1% gets to enjoy the same inequality as in 'murica.
- That's been Britain since the 2010s, they all caught Ameriboo fever and want to be a carbon copy of burgerland.
  
  It's alway funny when a Brit gets really mad at any non-Brit discussing politics and says, "it's not like the US!" Idk their politicians seem to be trying pretty damn hard to ape whatever the Dems and Republicans are doing.

Poor motorists having only like 99% of infrastructure reserved for them.
So victimised right now.
Let's take away railway sleepers so they can drive on the tracks.

This reads like satire
#motoristlivesmatter

Ah yes, the freedom to be stuck in traffic jams. Now where have I heard that before...
- No! They will add a lane! Can't be stuck on another lane!
  /s
  
  houses, shops, offices, city centres. parks, they've been waging war on cars for since 1666.
  It's about time someone did something to put a stop to them.
- No punchline. This is the average WASP's idea of "fun" and how they want YOU to spend your life.

"I love cars. Therefore we should mandate that EVERYONE drives!"
As someone who is forced to drive because I was unlucky enough to be born in bumfuck nowhere: fuck you. I hate always-busy traffic. If waiting in line is your idea of fun, go watch paint dry or something. I'm too busy to lengthen my commute.
- He's British. They always like to spontaneously form and stand in lines!
- Have you seen the latest from Macron ? he said exactly that a few days ago. You can make out the car & oil lobby through his words https://youtu.be/Tpbci1kOMEM
  Rough transcript :
  "We (the french) care about our cars. Me ? I dig/love it."

More freedom for people that can afford to buy a car and live in an area with ample parking. But no freedom for everyone else amirite
- You're free to travel how you like as long as you keep the fuck out of my way and breathe in my car farts
- I can afford a car. There's plenty of parking where I live. But I'd much rather use my transport as an opportunity to use my bike, raise my fitness, and reduce my contribution to climate change, thanks. All of Sunak's ideas here are bad news.

LTN is low traffic neighborhood.
Anyone else notice the pluses don't actually do anything?
Use bus lane when it's not rush hour? So it does nothing.
Parking? Doesn't solve traffic.
- The beauty of all of this to the Tories is that it gives them something to crow about, without actually having to do any work.
- Hey you can now use the bus lanes at midnight pm on a Sunday, and have extra parking spots in Peckham. It benefits everyone!

My god what a trainwreck. I'm so sorry folks
- Car wreck, trains already got too much bad pr
  
  Right !

Ahh yes, the same PM who has a list of 5 directly contradictory statements as his so-called ‘plan’, that one right?

As someone who drives a car in the UK, I'd like to point out that this is a load of old bollocks designed to drum up votes from Boomers ahead of what's looking to be an absolute embarrassment of an election for the Tories in the next year or so.
Almost none of these promises have any actual substance to them, and are largely just meaningless slogans designed to rile up the Boomers* who have spent their lives being taught that public transport and bikes are what poor lefties do.
If Labour have been quiet on these issues, it's because they know that their best election strategy at this point is to just let the Tories flap on, doling out enough rope with which to hang themselves.
*not all Boomers, obviously, but they really are the majority of Tory voters
- Well I'm not a UK driver but all of those ideas sound good to me, because cars give people freedom to go wherever they want and help the economy keep going. Tons of people don't have access to public transit and they do have cars, and they need them to get to work and the rest of the places they go to live their lives.
  Sure, build more public transit to help out too, and create incentives for pollution reduction and all that. But if you want the regular people on your side you will have to stop trying to take their freedom to drive away.
  
  Just move to America if you want unsafe roads for bikers and parking lot after parking lot.
  
  Boy oh boy are you in the wrong community...

I see, taking notes from their overweight neighbors across the pond, they've chosen the way of teh hambruger
- They're called hamberders now, in line with the infoulable orange Jesus

Cursed island

There’s a small YouTube channel I watch of a this dude longboard around London. It’s amazing how pedestrian and skate friendly it is. They’d be doing some proper long term damage if this kind of thinking gets through. With Brexit the Brits might be in for a decade more of rolling back civilisation.
- Just the one?
- The EU wasn't the cause of the parts of britain that aren't car centric
  
  I was referring to conservative movements

Typical tory, their patron saint Thatcher said as much:
"A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure."

This is so obvious and dumb populism it reminds me of Trump because just like most of Trumps statements, it reads like bad satire. If this guy wouldn´t be in a position of power it would be quite funny to read ... !fuckcars@lemmy.world

- this is the most important comment in this whole thread. Sunak – who absorbed the party leadership role as the "continuity candidate" – is trying to pitch his own party as the radical opposition when they've been running the country for 30 of the 43 years he's been alive, and have been more or less electorally unopposed for the entirety of his political career. the amount of unironic opportunitistic populist bullshit he's got blowing his sails along would be funny if it wasn't so viscerally horrible

Brits will do this to themselves and then in 10-20 years complain about how they have no friends or significant other because it's hard to meet people. All while continuing to vote for people like this.

for many, life would be difficult without their car
Hmmm, I wonder what kind of policies and public services could be implemented to make life not difficult for non-car users? 🤔

Fuck this dude and his plan and his shitty fat polluting murder machines

There's absolutely zero point in discussing this.
It's pure ~~whistleblowing~~ dogwhistle and deflection politics. And that's it.
Edit: Mixed up whistling. Tired and distracted.
- Do you mean dogwhistling? Whistleblowing is something else.
  
  Yes, my bad. Total brain melt moment.
- What do you mean? I am sure he will put in place some shitty measures that will make traffic worse then he can blame Labour for it. They can even use their much loved "since the previous Labour government..." line. And it won't be over a decade ago they are talking about! Yay!

This kind of stance is common enough with Canadian conservatives. They prattle on about the "war on cars", all bleary eyed about people "just need to get to work" whenever public transit, climate change, parking or biking comes up.

Fucking clown, if you're serious about your civilization you prepare it to move hundreds of millions efficiently on a daily basis. Cars don't provide that.

Labour are shooting themselves in the foot. Instead of proposing a tax on the ultra wealthy to try and subsidize buying less polluting cars. They are forcing the poor to buy cars they can't afford in cities where public transport is both not complete and expensive. They have lost touch with the working class. Alienating them against climate action. And driving them to the arms of the Tories.
- None of this post is about Labour...
  
  It kinda is. Because this is the Tories' response to Labour and Sadiq Khan expanding Ulez in London

As an expat - fuck this clowncar. Fuck this litany of clueless prime ministers that so desperately wants to be a mini USA, with no lessons learned.

britain must be one of the only places on earth more hopeless than the US
Death to America

All you have to say is "conservative"

God cursed bri'ins with horrible teeth as punishment for their many sins.
- I thought that was gargling with urine in the middle ages as an early whitener.
- It is pretty curious how all the problems with the world can be traced to British people doing things.
  
  British imperialism which is the fault of the nobility, and no other aristocratic community is any less ambitious.

As someone forced to drive for their commute, who has frequently been made late by cyclists forcing emergency stopz, and who hates the way things are currently going on the roads, this isn't going to win my vote.
The issue is that I'm forced to drive due to public transport being too expensive, unreliable, and, let me be frank, unsafe in some areas if you're transporting a laptop after dark. Ever tried to move a box of teaching supplies around on a bike, ye god's never again!
I don't want freed up bus lanes, I want more buses with a guard on then after dark. The roadworks fines, I think everyone wants that sorted out because it hits buses really hard. As for parking - definitely - better parking for bikes outside local shops, and safe storage for people travelling on public transport with luggage or heavy loads.
Less popular but definitely needed - insurance for bike users and mandatory licenses (sorry but some folks out there are accidents waiting to happen on a bike).
- Insurance and licencing for cyclists is a really terrible idea. Everywhere that has tried mandatory insurance has given up on it because it just isn't worth the cost. If you want to do licenses how to you administer the tests? What age do you have to be to take it? And therefore how many children are you banning from cycling? The issues disappear once you have decent infrastructure for cyclists, which is a much better solution for both sides.
  
  So in Germany for example, cyclists over the age of 13 (I believe) are required by law to use the road. And using the road, they should know the rules of the road.
  In most places, some form of cycling classes is an integral part of the curriculum, with an actual exam in fourth grade. Though it's all voluntary, no child is legally required to participate.
  So the license kids get from that is not an official document and more symbolic than anything, but I think it's quite nice for them to have actual classes and an exam they can take for it.
  
  Cyclist insurance is primarily so expensive (here) because cyclists here are fucking morons with no affinity for personal safety and responsibility.
  I understand their plight as a motorcyclist (as well as other vulnerable travel methods) However, in my experience acting like shit and expecting everyone else to ensure YOUR safety is not a very appropriate way to stay safe.
  I actively behave on the roads as if being targeted by a bit squad. I have had one accident in my entire driving life that could be considered my fault. Yet, when speaking with cyclists etc. All they have to talk about is their latest near fatality that most certainly wasn't their fault! No sir they had absolutely no hand in it!
- I both drive and cycle for commuting, and having experience with both it's hard to imagine what practical use mandatory insurance would be for cyclists, given that only third-party insurance is mandatory for drivers, and it's largely to cover the huge amount of physical damage someone can create with a 2-tonne block of metal propelled by an engine, something that really isn't comparable to ~10kg powered only by one person's legs.
  and yeah sure hypothetically a cyclist could make a mistake that indirectly causes a car to cause an accident but this relatively very rare compared to the hundreds of accidents directly caused by drivers every day, and even rarer that the accident would be solely the fault of one party (ie. if a cyclist in front of a driver did a bad maneuver and the driver had to do an emergency stop, the driver was probably far too close to the cyclist)
  at the end of the day, calls for cyclists to have insurance or licence plates usually come from people who are less invested in whether or not these are practical solutions, and more from car drivers who irrationally just want cyclists to suffer from the same inconveniences they have to deal with
  
  As someone whose aunt was hospitalised because a young (early 20s) cyclist hit her on the pavement and sped off, I disagree.
  Never caught, she ended up with a fractured hip. While it's easy to believe "all cyclists are good people like me", the reality is that every group of transit users has its problem members.
  I do agree, cars can cause a lot more damage (and injuries are almost always MUCH more serious), which is why you'd set a lower premium rate for cyclists. They're covered, so you are covered.
  If I am ever in a position to cycle in to work, I'd feel a lot more comfortable knowing that if someone hits me and damages my bike, I won't be relying on their goodwill or just footing the bill.
- Holy shit I don't want to live where you're living. It sounds horrible.
  
  South of England, 10/10 would not recommend.

Honestly Labour has been quiet about the Tories panic promises leading up to the election next year. We know they have been swapping approaches and going back on their own manifesto. The Green party has been making decent promises, however, unlike the Labour party.
Labour Vs Green
🔴No wealth tax 🟢£70bn Wealth Tax
🔴Tuition Fees 🟢Free Tuition
🔴Private NHS 🟢Nationalise NHS
🔴£10 p/h+ 🟢£15 p/h+
🔴Pro-Trident v 🟢Anti-Trident
🔴Privatised Energy 🟢Public Energy
🔴No UBI 🟢 Pro UBI
🔴Migrant Crackdown 🟢Refugees welcome
🔴No promise to building council housing 🟢500,000 council homes
🔴 Keep 2 Child Cap 🟢 Abolish 2 Child Cap
🔴 Back Oil Drilling 🟢 Green New Deal
- I'd probably vote green if they had any chance of winning, but their opposition to HS2 annoys me. They support building a new north south rail link, but not the one we're already building.
  
  Honestly, since Corbyn isn't in the Labour party, there is no redeeming quality of them deserving a vote. They just became red Tories with a few members being socialist or reformist. I have critical support for the Green party, not only because of their policy promises but because they seem to lean towards socialism far more than Labour is. I still advocate for my own party that we have up here in Scotland but we need to gain major traction still, although a full on revolution of the proles would be ideal at this point like 1919 Battle of George Square but successful.

I don't think completely unprompted violence is often the answer, but I'd love to se this fucker mauled.
- Is it unprompted?

My main question is:
If Sunak thought 20mph speed limits were such a big problem, why didn't he block the Senedd passing them like he did with Scottish parliament reforming GRA (or the Senedd's attempts to do the same)?
Parliament has been blocking English councils from setting 20mph speed limits locally, so it can't be that he's suddenly changed his mind about local democracy.

They targeted drivers. drivers

What's LTN?
- Low Traffic Neighbourhood. The pinnacle of oppression for all those poor motorists.
  
  Motorists want more traffic now, interesting.
- Something similar to the autoluw concept

Wow I have not heard of a single news item about sunak that is even relatively benign. What a tool.

fucking dreadful scumbag is going to win votes from this, too

Damn, it's a fucking bold stance to say you're for increasing ripoff fines.
- What's a ripoff fine? Google isn't helping on this one
  
  Presumably any fine applied to a motorist. They are all unjust.
  
  An answer assuming you were genuinely asking: it's a fine that is considered disproportionately heavy I.e. 300k for stepping on your neighbors lawn.
  An answer assuming you were sarcastically asking and an answer that this politician endorses: any fine that effects me - for all values of me that donated to my campaign.

Yeah, sorry about him.

To be honest, I could get behind fines for overrunning street works. Hell, go further: fines for any overrunning, underdelivering or overbudget public contracts. That would quickly resolve the mess that the torys have made giving out dodgy contracts to their mates.

Is this real? I honestly can't tell any more.

Genuine question, what is the deal with bus lanes?
- Some drivers hate them because they think buses are cheating by using them, and of course that one more lane would totally fix traffic once and for all
  Presumably this policy is around adjusting them to not be bus lanes outside certain hours, which is actually the case for many of them at the moment, but most drivers ignore this because it would require them to be capable of reading a sign.
  
  Busses get to cheat because they are a super-duper car pool. Maybe fully packed cars with 4+ passengers might be allowed to use them.
  Some carpool lanes in the States are open to a driver and a single passenger.
- They're lanes for buses
- Nothing.

Nothing in there about promoting work from home, I see. Best part of the lockdowns was the empty roads. More wfh the easier commutes get

Terrible man has terrible plan. More at eleven

You might hate it but freedom to travel is a vote winner, unless you can push similar messages about making people's lives better and freer then it's going to be hard getting people on board.
- These measures are only freer travel for those who can afford to drive (and sit in traffic). Fuck everyone else, because tory
- @Meowoem @mondoman712 All the more reason to clamp down on cars, which really do limit people's freedom to travel, especially those who don't use cars.
  For those how have experienced travelling in places with high quality public transport and active travel infrastructure, the freedom from motorised congestion IS a real vote winner. Hardly anyone wants to go back to the noise, congestion & pollution of the car... Only those who have never experienced real freedom, think it is the car
  
  Where are you talking about? My local public transport network is considered one of the best in the world and it's far from a vote winner lol

I would like to see how he deals with rip off fines... Nottingham city comes to mind. That council loves bleeding motorists for funding.

All of these comments seem crazy to me. Getting mad you're allowed to go over 20mph? You want to pay rip off fines? I can understand that more parking has the potential to make roads unwalkable and unsafe, I've seen the videos about stroads, I totally agree. But the other points seem positive. Are people mad he's focusing on cars while doing nothing for other bicycling and walkability? Because if this was part of a larger transportation project I think it would be positive, except for the parking issue.
- They're all encouraging more driving, which leads to more pollution and more pedestrian deaths. 20mph speed limits reduce collisions, reduce the severity when they do happen, decrease pollution, and barely has an effect on journey times.
  
  The 20mph part is most infuriating. Obviously not paying 'rip-off fines' sounds great but I honestly don't even know what he's talking about. But 20mph is great, and from a driving experience perspective the difference to 30 is so arbitrary. How changing that back is letting drivers 'live their lives' I have no clue. What if I want to go at 35mph, Rishi?
- 20mph zones are generally around schools or heavily pedestrianised areas. Children are going to die as a result of blanket removal of 20mph zones.
  
  the person you're responding to doesn't care so long as it means they get to mcdonald's five seconds faster
- Getting mad you're allowed to go over 20mph?
  I'm a pedestrian. A car going over 20 mph isn't getting me to my destination any faster, it's putting my life at risk to get its driver somewhere faster.
- Getting mad you're allowed to go over 20mph?
  sometimes, even on roads, you'll find these un-vehicled, squishy beings who are not protected by 4000 pounds of steel. and when these small beings are hit by a large motor vehicle, they can get very hurt. the faster the vehicle is going, the more hurt they get. speed = ouchie. when a car going 20mphs hits them, they can get hurt and scared, but usually, they'll be okay. but if the car is going very fast when it hits them, they can get a boo boo so bad that it can't be fixed even by a doctor :(
- Getting mad you're allowed to go over 20mph? You want to pay rip off fines?
  yes. if i had my way driving would be illegal except in very special circumstances. cars are a plague on humanity and the earth
  Death to America
  
  How are you going to transport material goods without cars and trucks? How will doctors get to patients? I hope you pledge to never own or rent a car, and you never ride in someone else's car because you think they should be illegal. Next time you are in someone's car tell them you think they should be arrested for driving a car.